thanks for joining us. let's talk about where we are. what would you say? where are we in terms of a deal? >> not as bad as last week and not as bad as the week before. not really in a great position to get things done. the president's more interested in campaigning around the country and telling people to send twitter messages to me on my twitter account. i haven't really seen much. we haven't seen much in the way of phone calls either. that's what he's trying to do. this campaign style rather than sitting down and actually negotiating. >> we did see a tweet earlier from the president basically saying, look, if your taxes go up, it's the republicans' fault. what are you willing to give on? >> what is he willing to give on? this is an interesting question. the president has spent the last month talking about tax increases. and my question to him is, where are the smepending cuts? come to the table with this. we in the house put forward the ryan budget. for two years we got the heck beat out of us based on our plan for medicare.